I’ve noticed a recent trend developing that brand awareness on social networks has been decreasing. I decided to research this and uncovered some factors that are causing a decrease in engagement on social media. I’ve always encouraged bloggers to make sure they keep social media marketing alive because it can be vital for brand awareness, traffic, and conversions. I admit social media can be very tricky simply because you have their popularity growing so quickly and have so many you can promote on every day. For example, right from the top of my head, you have:
- Google +
- Delicious
- Digg
- And many more
I’ve noticed what tends to happen is bloggers and/or businesses tend to overwhelm themselves NOT knowing where to focus their marketing efforts. This means putting 20% effort into all of them and this causes a drop in the quality of content shared by them on these platforms. Today, I’d like to discuss some fundamental factors contributing to why brands are losing social engagement and what you can do about it going forward. Let’s get started…
Content Quality
The most important reason some brands are losing social engagement is because they’ve forgotten why many are following their brand in the first place. For example, you probably built your business on excellent customer service and providing valuable content, however, over time, I’ve noticed many bloggers are forgetting their foundation. This is very common among those who have grown quickly, but don’t have the manpower to handle day-to-day tasks. If you are going to post and share common information, then you’ll lose engagement. This type of content can be found anywhere online and is NOT appealing to your audience as unique high quality content.
It’s recommended you focus on writing high quality content even if this means not posting as frequently. This will increase the chances of you posting relevant unique content, keeping your followers engaged and wanting more.
Time Spent
Another huge reason brands are losing social engagement is because they simply don’t spend enough time on social networks. If you are NOT going to spend time on your business then it’s NOT going to grow and MOST likely will have the opposite effect going forward. I’ve always encouraged businesses to spend 1 hour daily engaging with followers on social media. Why? On social networks, you can comment and ask questions, which is what happens a lot, so you have to answer their feedback. It shows you care about their opinion and the same obviously applies when they leave a comment on your blog.
I encourage you to spend at least “1†hour daily on social networks, making sure you engage with your followers. However, I know this can become tedious so to reduce the time, I encourage you to focus on ONLY the big social platforms. The ones you choose will depend on the testing and tweaking you’ve done over time, finding out which ones are right for you.
Low Frequency
The funny thing is you can share high value content and even be on every single day, but simply NOT be posting enough and this means visibility will be decreased. I’ve worked with many clients over the years and noticed a trend developing. What? They are simply NOT posting enough content and don’t keep promoting their older posts, which ultimate lowers brand awareness. The more you can get content in front of your audience, the more they will comment, re-share, and keep coming back. When asked why this is happening, they simply state the following…
They don’t have enough time or are NOT organized enough to put this system into play.
I provide them with a very simple answer and this answer is based on automation. If you are using WordPress, you have several social plug-ins that will automate the sharing process. You have to configure what categories you want this plug-in to pull posts from and how frequently you want it to share on social platforms. Next,
The Bufferapp.com is amazing for the same thing, however, you have to configure it a bit more. The cool thing about this auto-share application is it provides a complete breakdown of the statistics important for finding out what content resonates better with your audience.